One of the signature experiences of our times is the sense of living through simultaneously occurring energetic shifts, over and over. You know the feeling. Everything’s moving, and everything’s fast–and everything’s changing. We don’t always know what’s happening, but more and more of us are sensing that, on at almost every moment, something big is going on.

The truth is, many big things are going on. Small but profound energetic shifts that happen almost daily. They include the Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, and Mars into and out of signs. All of them are nested inside much larger shifts that happen only once or twice a century or so. The Uranus-Pluto square, Neptune’s entrance into his own sign of Pisces, and Venus’ passage across the Sun are examples. Even these are nested inside even larger shifts, that only occur once in every 2,000 years or so and are happening in our lifetimes. The passage from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius is one of these larger cosmic shifts

Each of these shifts is an energetic gateway and we are stepping through them in rapidly accelerating succession.  As we step through, we collaborate with the cosmos by finding a way to contain the energy so that it can be part of the earth experience.  There are many ways to do this–through awareness and through action.  Our fundamental cosmic task, however, is to contain the energies that are pouring into our lives and our world and allow the transfomative process of evolution to unfold within us and around us.

Another epic shift of energies happened nearly a year ago–and is being triggered again right now. As you read these words, something historic and cosmic is occurring. Venus, the Cosmic Feminine, is moving into 0 degrees of Virgo. She joins the great star Regulus, who arrived in Virgo on November 29, 2011. Today, for the first time, the fabled royal star illuminates the Cosmic Feminine in the sign of the Goddess. 

One of the four royal stars that the ancient Persians watched to foretell the rise and fall of kings, Regulus’ change of signs signaled the beginning of a new era. It was as if the cosmos itself proclaimed, “The King is Dead! Long Live the Queen!”  For Virgo is the ancient sign of the goddess in all her glory and power. In the Western zodiac, the one passed down to us from ancient Greece and Egypt, she is much diminished from her primordial status. When the Age of Aries established a new, yang-centered energetic structure 5,000 years ago, the supreme, revered power of the Cosmic Feminine was contained to two celestial bodies, both of whose power was great but undervalued. One was Venus. The other was the Moon. The full memory of the Cosmic Feminine went underground, into the Deep Memory. It lives there still, within us all. And it lives deep within the energy of Virgo, wherever we find it in our birth charts–and wherever we are bringing it to expression in our lvies.

Virgo was her ancient sign. A sense of mystery pervades Virgo still, evoking the tradition of temple priestesses who served the ever-Virgin goddess. These women were virgin in a sense that is little understood by our contemporary world. Their virginal status had nothing to do with sexual chasteness. Rather, it signaled that they were exempt from the duty to marry. The law they obeyed was not that of humans, but the sacred law of the divine feminine.

Or, as astrologer Michael Lutin wrote in The Huffington Post on November 28, 2011 (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-lutin/regulus-enters-virgo-the-_b_1114929.html), “From Hoboken to Tehran, accross all boundaries, ethnicities, and philosophies, this is an unstoppable wave. . . ‘Regulus is in Virgo so move over, Boys. The Patriarchy is fucked.'”

As this cosmic coronation takes place, Jupiter, the Giver of Blessings, stands motionless in the sky, about to turn retrograde on a vision quest.  He occupies a degree of the cosmos that carries the energy of mental metamorphosis. Evolve your mind, the Blessing Giver whispers.  Receive my blessings by expanding your awareness.   Neptune, the Cosmic Dreamer, holds space across the sky from Venus. In the first degree of Pisces, the Dreamer occupies a degree that carries the energy of “commingling and interchange which demonstrates the heatlh of a community.”  This is the same degree that Neptune has occupied for most of the  transformative events of this fabled year, 2012–the very first degree of his own sign, the sign he hasn’t visited in more than a century and a half. Seek inspiration, the Dreamer, tells us, in the panoply of human experience.  Embrace the diversity of human experience–and evolve.

And so, at long last, Venus receives her crown.